​Kanani's feature feels so special to me, and not just because she brought her adorable baby boy, Bodhi along with her! As a fellow NICU mom, her story hit me in the deepest places of my mama heart. Her willingness to share so openly of her feelings of worry, guilt and fear hit my soul and reminded me of my early days with my oldest daughter. But even more so, Kanani's love for her family, her adventurous spirit, and her positivity were a reminder that when the going gets tough - it's cool to cry about it, but it's also good to gather your circle of people together and allow yourself to feel loved. I hope you enjoy her feature as much as I enjoyed her company!

"5 (or 6) things I want the Simply Sisterhood community to know about me:

1. My goal is to return to subsistence living, reduce our footprint and impact as much as possible.

2. I absolutely ADORE David Bowie and Freddie Mercury.

3. I have nonamophobia. Even in broad daylight I freeze like a fainting goat when the power goes out.

4. I’ve swam in open ocean with sharks, jumped off 25-50 foot cliffs, mountain biked down a volcano, climbed the highest peak in NM, surfed the North Shore of Oahu, and joined the circus on a dare.

5. In Hawaii, I surfed alongside icons like Laird Hamilton, Gerry Lopez, Brock Little, Kai Lenny, John John Florence, and others. I had no idea these guys were famous. They were just friends in the lineup.

6. My husband, in addition to being super sexy and always hilarious, helps with lists sometimes! (Ryan may have helped a little here, too).​

"I was brought up with a really huge family in Hawaii, like sixteen cousins just on my mom’s side alone - so there was a really tight knit sense of community amongst us all. The majority of my cousins were female. I was sort of raised an only child; I have a brother and sister, but they grew up living with my dad while I lived with my mom. So we never really had that closeness that most people associate with siblings. Any time my cousins came over, that felt more like siblings to me. When I moved away from Hawaii, I ended up in California. It was a huge culture shock, because they don’t really seem to place the same value on family out there. It’s sort of every man for himself out in California, so I was really out of my element. I moved away for school at the age of twenty, basically by myself. I played soccer for Pasadena City College, and then ended up moving to Albuquerque never having been here before. Literally the only thing I knew about Albuquerque was that Bugs Bunny said he should have taken a left turn here! I went to UNM to finish up my Bachelor’s Degree with every intention of leaving as soon as school was over. But then I took up hiking and exploring and really fell in love with New Mexico and decided I was here to stay. I threw down roots here and years later, I am still here with a family of my own!

As far as my job goes, I’m sort of like Chandler from friends. No one really knows what I do! I have a bachelor’s degree in dance, but I actually work as a data analyst for a phone company. It’s not something I ever thought I would enjoy, but it is a really fulfilling job and something that I’m really good at! It’s something that I can work really hard at, and then when I leave, I can put my mom and wife and adventurer hat back on. . . and that makes me really happy!"​

"My daughter Maya is one of the most empathetic people I’ve ever met. She really is in tune with how other people are feeling, and watching her makes me think, “Hey, I must’ve done something right!” Even though it probably had nothing to do with me! I was a single mom from the time Maya was a year old until I met my husband, Ryan, when she was six. I worked really hard to teach Maya that it wasn’t just her and I against the world, and that even though we didn’t have other family around, we could still build a community. She came to all my dance performances and found a family among the people there. I just had that village mentality, and I did everything in my power to create a village for her. I wanted her to know that she wasn’t here to compete with others, but to exist peacefully with others.

I’m almost forty years old, and I’m still trying to figure out how to be a woman! I think the most challenging part is finding balance between the thousands of obligations we have. A lot of women feel like they have to wear a lot of hats and excel at every single thing we do. We constantly compare ourselves to others, and we just end up judging everyone - including ourselves. Satisfying all of my obligations and really trying to use the word “no,” is what I am really working on. I am constantly asking myself, “how much work is too much work?” Yes, it’s great for my children to see me succeed, but I also don’t want to be away from them for extended periods of time. I want to lead by example, and prioritize family first.

I always like to remind myself (and my daughter) that we are all human beings first. And yes, I am a woman and maybe that means I have to carry a little bit more responsibility in some ways. Maybe I have to adapt to environments quicker, or push back a little bit harder to be myself. But I can either decide to feel the need to prove myself constantly, or decide that I am good enough, I know myself, and I am satisfied with who I am. I think we spend so much time as a child, just swallowing what you’ve been fed; by your parents, by your extended family, your church, whoever. And you reach this point where maybe it doesn’t really jive anymore with what you believe. So that makes you really start to question what you are feeding your own kids and what you want to instill in them as they grow up."

​"With my son, Bodhi, I had a super easy, 100% complication free pregnancy. Well, other than the fact that according to American standards, I basically have a geriatric uterus! My midwife told me, “you’re not just a little bit at an advanced maternal age, you’re thirty nine years old.” So, they kept a close eye on the baby and myself throughout my whole pregnancy. Everything went extremely smooth throughout the pregnancy and my labor. He came on his own, one day before my due date. I worked the entire day while I was in labor, dropped my daughter off with her dad, headed to the hospital, and everything was going according to plan. When Bodhi was born, he was not pink, he was floppy, he was silent, and the room sort of exploded with activity. The nurse took him away to the table and told me there would be a lot of people coming in, and not to panic. So naturally, I begin to panic. I kept asking, “why isn’t he crying?” over and over again. They brought him over a few minutes later with an oxygen mask on. He was pink and making some squeaking noises, and Ryan and I both assumed that everything was good from that point.

He ended up in the NICU shortly thereafter. In the NICU, they have something called rounds every morning, where you can show up and get an update on your baby from the actual doctors that are working with them. They go through and lay out the medical plan for you. Now, Bodhi was born on a Saturday. We went to rounds every morning - Sunday through Wednesday. And it wasn’t until Thursday morning that I finally worked up the courage to ask, “So, what exactly happened in the delivery room? Why are we here? What is going on?” And that was when I found out that my baby had been born code pink; meaning he was born not breathing and without a heartbeat, and that he had no tone, even after they got him breathing again. I read through his file and realized that he had gone over two minutes without a heartbeat or breath in him when he was born. Even after he was breathing, he was very unresponsive. He barely registered on the Apgar when he was born. And after a few hours of being alive, he started to catch up, but there are still concerns when it comes to being without oxygen for that long - things like brain damage, kidney function, etc. that kept us in intensive care. They kept him in a cooling bed, completely undressed to lower his core temperature and give all of his organs a chance to rest and sort of let his brain catch up. They did that for four days, and then finally when that was over, Ryan and I got to hold our son for the first time. And that was the moment where we could believe that we were going to get to take him home, and just felt so thankful that he had survived this. Little by little, we whittled away all of the worries about his brain, his oxygen, his kidneys, his heart, etc. until finally the neurologist came down to our room to give us his MRI results. Usually they will just send the results down to your nurse, but the neurologist wanted to come down personally to tell us that Bodhi’s results were in, and his brain looked 100% normal. Finally, a morning came where I was able to breastfeed my son for the first time. The nurse asked if I wanted to go to rounds, and I decided to send Ryan so I could stay with Bodhi. Ryan was psyched up to ask the doctors all these hard questions and figure out what hoops we needed to jump through to get ourselves discharged. Not ten minutes passed, and Ryan comes walking back in with the nurse, with a giant smile on his face, and asked me, “how would you feel about taking our boy home tomorrow?” I lost it. The relief and joy that overwhelmed me was indescribable. After eleven days of uncertainty, we walked out of the hospital together."

​"During all of this, I kept feeling like maybe I had caused this. I told myself that it had to have been something that I did because my body was responsible for taking care of him. And that is such a burden to bear as a mother. When I started sharing the news that Bodhi had complications when he was born, I started to realize how many moms have had similar experiences and have spent time in the NICU. That realization helped me to see that, sometimes things like this just happen, and it is really out of our control as mothers. We have support groups and classes to prepare us for labor, but we really don’t prepare mothers for the idea that something could go wrong. There is a team of wonderful, heroic people at the ready to care for your baby if there are complications, but then where do you find the support system for yourself when things go south? Nobody prepares you for when you don’t get to hold your baby, for the uncertainty that surrounds birth complications, for how you will feel about it. No matter how many people you have close to you, no one understands the loneliness that you feel in these situations, and the fear that you have as a mom. There is no explanation for what happened to Bodhi. Doctors have run all of these tests and tried their hardest to find something wrong with him, but there is really just no satisfying reason for why he was born without a heartbeat. Women are often just guilt ridden, as humans. Whether it be for sexual assault, divorce, whatever it is. We feel guilty for just about everything. And I think we even feel guilty for being upset by difficult circumstances, because it could always be worse. I got to take my baby home from the hospital, and the fact that there are many women who do not get that luxury is not lost on me. But I remind myself that pain is relative to everyone’s experience and we are allowed to feel pain in our own experiences. ​As a society, we don’t address the emotional trauma that mothers sometimes experience. We prescribe pills and put band aids on bullet wounds, but we never remove the bullet. We need to do a better job of honoring mothers’ experiences and pain and supporting them through these things. Now that I’m back at work, and Ryan is staying home with the baby, I struggle with being away from them. Of course it’s wonderful to have Bodhi stay with his dad, and to know that he is being well taken care of while I’m at work, but being away from my family is when I start to struggle with anxiety and reliving the hard moments. But as each day passes and Bodhi continues to do another thing that is classified as ‘normal’, I am reminded that we are surviving this! The little moments, like Bodhi discovering his hands, feel so special when you weren’t sure if you were going to get them. And that is the beauty of motherhood."

I have known Tammy for many years, and in a lot of ways, she was like a second Mom to me. So it makes perfect sense that a lot of our conversation revolved around motherhood, seasons of life, and the struggles associated with parenting. What was a joyous surprise to me, however, was how willing she was to share the stories of her youth, particularly a forgiveness story directed towards her own parents. Tammy is a compassionate soul, a deep thinker, and an encourager at heart. May her story inspire you as it has inspired me!​

​"I was born and raised here in Albuquerque. I was born into a family that was going through some struggles, although I didn’t know anything about them as I was a baby and small child!I had two older brothers whom I just loved and adored and were really good to me. Bruce and I (my middle brother) were the closest, and he would take me everywhere he went.My dad left my mom for another woman when I was around eighteen months old. I grew up without a dad, and I don’t really remember even thinking or noticing that there was someone missing in my life. My mom worked basically all the time and my brothers took care of me a lot - they are eight and ten years older than me. It was always just the four of us. I was truly a very happy kid. I had such a fun childhood playing with all the kids in my neighborhood until dark.

Around the time I was five or six, my mother got remarried. I remember being so excited to have a dad! I really thought that my step dad was my dad. I have this distinct memory of him buying us furniture; he bought me a canopy bed, and this hot pink poodle bench that sat at the foot of my bed and I just thought it was the most amazing thing in the world! Somewhere along the way, my mom and my step dad, Mel, got divorced. I remember him coming to the house one night and I ran to him and yelled, “Daddy! Daddy!” He took me to a store for a milkshake, and when he brought me home, he and my mother got into an argument and I remember him saying “you need to tell her” before he left. My mother pulled me aside and told me, “Mel is not your dad,” and I was just devastated because he was the only dad I had ever known.

I don’t really remember meeting my biological father, but he has told me a story about us meeting at a little league game. My mom pointed out a man in the stands and told me, “see that man over there? Go over and tell him your name.” So I walked over and told him hello and what my name was. He spoke with me for a little while, but I don’t think he told me who he was. It was the first time my mother had ever let him interact with me since the divorce.Around third grade, I started to spend time with my dad after school sometimes. I went over to his house and met my half sister, Sharon. I was really just baffled by the situation. I slowly got to know him, but he sort of always felt like a stranger to me."​

​"On went life, and I spent my senior year in Oklahoma City with my brother Bruce and his wife. My mom sent me to live with them because I really went wayward my junior year. I was in with the wrong crowd, the wrong boy, etc. I remember going to a party with my boyfriend at the time, and walking in and seeing people snorting cocaine and just realizing that this wasn’t what I wanted for myself. So, I turned around and walked out, and walked all the way home. I tried to break up with him after that, but he was very possessive and my mom ended up getting a restraining order against him. My mom and I had a really strained relationship and I was really struggling to just figure out who I was and what my place was in the world. I remember one night, I went into my room and kneeled at that pink poodle bench, and I said, “God, please help me!” and He worked a miracle so quickly. That spring, my mother decided to send me to live in Oklahoma to get me out of the bad situations I was in. I went there (for what I thought was just the summer) to live with my brother and his wife and their three kids. My whole life had been uprooted. I had been in school with all of the same kids since elementary school and all of the sudden, I was being shipped off to a new place where I knew almost nobody. I made friends with some really kind and loving girls during the summer, and then I found out that I was staying there to finish school and everyone had known except for me. That was really hard for me to accept, but ultimately was such a great move for me. I got involved in the drama program at school and made a lot of friends and improved my grades. When I graduated, I spent the summer back in Albuquerque and then left in the fall for Dallas Christian College. I met my husband, Joel, there. We got married in Dallas, and lived there for six months and then we moved to East Texas for him to go to school. During that time, my mom (who had breast cancer when I was in fourth grade) was diagnosed with bone cancer. After Joel graduated, we moved back to Albuquerque and took care of my mother for about six months, and then she passed away. I was only 25 when she died, and it was really tough. The last week of her life, a lot of secrets came out; secrets about her life. She was very afraid to die, and so one of her very good friends who was a Christian came over and we talked to her about what her fears were and she admitted to a lot of things, including that she had affairs. And right before she died, I told her that she needed to forgive my father, and she agreed. I remember tears streaming down her face, and she said, “I forgive him. I do.” If I had been older and more mature, I would have brought my dad over for that moment, but it all worked out for the best.

We moved back to Texas for a while, and then I had my oldest daughter, Lacey. When she was three months old, we moved back to Albuquerque because Joel was encouraging me to reconnect with my dad and build a relationship with him. So, we moved back and had our middle daughter, Olivia and began to work towards building a relationship with my father. And then my youngest daughter, Tori was born when Lacey was nine and Olivia was six.

​During this time, I was getting to know my dad and my half sister, and sort of hearing their perspective on everything that had happened. One day, my dad and I had a really serious talk, and he told me, “you do not know the guilt that I live with every single day. I don’t see how God could forgive me.” My knowledge, and what I knew from my walk in faith was that he was wrong. That God did love him and would forgive him, all he had to do was ask. I knew that God commanded me to forgive him as well. And I did forgive him. We just grew from that point, and it is such a blessing that my daughters have these great memories of my dad to look back on."

"Life took its path, and as my dad was growing older, he had a lot of health problems. He had a triple bypass to help with the issues in his heart and he just always remained really positive. He started going to church, and even gave one of his grandsons a bible for graduation. As my dad was approaching his eighties, his health started to deteriorate. In February of 2015, my dad took Joel and I out to lunch for my birthday, and he passed away the following Wednesday. I was awake and getting ready for work, and I saw my sister in law’s name pop up on my phone and I just knew. Several days later, we had the funeral and I was able to speak on forgiveness at the service. It felt like life had come full circle for me at that moment.

I started to get into health and fitness right around the time Lacey left for college. I would go work out at Curves and just really enjoyed it. I joined the gym and got a trainer, and I decided to go back to school and become a personal trainer! I wasn’t sure where I wanted to work at first, but God just really opened doors and directed me to the place I work now, even though I felt unsure about it. And now, I love my job! I was afraid of the sales aspect of it, but I somehow have managed to build a strong clientele without ever having to chase people or try to sell my services to them!"

​"When I was little, I played school all the time. I taught my dolls and made bulletin boards for them to learn. I loved teaching and instructing. I think that was sort of a preview of what my future would be! As I became a mother, I got to put those loves to use; first just in motherhood, and then as a homeschooling mom. My first daughter was not the easiest baby, she was very fretful. So it was sort of challenging to step into that role and struggle through all of it together. I remember sitting Olivia and Lacey in the bathtub together when Liv was a baby and Lacey was about three, and telling Lacey, “You know, Lacey, in life you will have many friends and they will all come and go, but your sister will always be here and she will always be your friend.” And that is truly what became of them. My youngest daughter, Victoria came along when Lacey was nine and Olivia was six. And while there was some jealousy among them growing up, all three of them are so close now and it’s really beautiful to watch them love each other.

I had no idea what motherhood would be like. When Joel and I were first married, he had this idea that I would be a career woman and we would have a big house and a boat and all of these things. But I quietly thought to myself that I remembered what it was like to be in daycare because my mom was working three jobs, and I just did not want that for my children. I wanted to stay home with them and be the mom I didn’t have a chance to have. When my mom died at 57, I really didn’t know her. I didn’t know who she was. And that became my motivation in motherhood; when I die, I want my daughters to know who I am. I wanted to have a deep, meaningful relationship with each of them. When I got pregnant, we agreed that I would stay home and we could make it work. And we did!​I, like all other parents, made many mistakes along the way. But I believe that’s what happens when God has imperfect people raising imperfect people. We learned on the job, and I learned the importance of asking my children for forgiveness. I just did the best that I could along the way, and I believe that through all of our mistakes, we sharpened each other. I learned so much from my kids about how to be a parent.

Women’s seasons in life can often bring about anxiety. Each of my daughters and I have struggled with it at different times, and it just seems to be something that affects women more strongly than men. I’ve thought about aging a lot, and how some us can do it gracefully, and others with a bad attitude. When my oldest daughter moved away, I really wasn’t prepared for the empty nest. I was mourning the loss of a season that was finished. The change of the house being empty was really heartbreaking. You devote your life to raising these children, and you find so much of your identity in mothering young children. I just kept praying that God would help me embrace my new identity, my career, and the new path in life that I was taking. And I realized that what God has me doing now is helping others. I believe that we are all created to serve others. In my job, I have become not only a trainer, but also a confidant for these clients. I have this whole new garden to tend to, and once I opened my eyes to that, I was able to find joy in this new season of life. As you go through life, you learn that every little piece of what you do is creating a legacy; whether it's your career, or your family, or your passion, you are leaving something behind to be remembered by. "

​"Five things I want the Simply Sisterhood Community to know about me:

1) I tried out for America's Funniest People here in Albuquerque in 1992. ​2) I was a quarterback in middle school for a powderpuff football team.

3) When I lived in East Texas, I worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken general offices. I once sang Happy Birthday on the radio for someone at a retirement home in a chicken voice! The people In the retirement home could not believe that a chicken could sing happy birthday!

4) I was the women's pickle ball champion at the JCC in 2013. For my prize, I received a trophy, and a hot mama pickle!

5) Also in East Texas, Joel and I had a friend that built ultralight airplanes. He built a two seater, and I flew with him in it several times!"

Tammy is the epitome of a people person. She has an infectious laugh that she brings with her everywhere she goes and her heart for hearing others and sharing wisdom is apparent in all that she does. Welcome to the Sisterhood, Tammy!

{All photos are property of Simply Sisterhood and Smitten by a Promise Photography. ​Please refrain from cropping, editing or copying photos.}

Our society is at a really pivotal point, right now. While I am only twenty eight years old, I feel like I have never seen women banding together, speaking up, and showing support in the ways that we are seeing those things happen today. From the #metoo movement, to women's marches, to #timesup, to literature, art, and movies that empower and embolden women, there is truly a reckoning happening amongst women in the world. While it has been amazing to see women banding together and standing up for ourselves, there is also pain and brokenness in sharing the struggles that we face. The ME TOO movement has lit a spark in my own heart to no longer feel the need to be silent about the sexual harassment, assault, and abuse that I have faced. It has taught me that there is power in speaking your story. There is power in listening and loving people as they speak through theirs. And there is a raw beauty in the quiet acknowledgement that we have all faced this to some degree, and we won't stand for it anymore. That being said, here are the anonymous submissions I received during our Me Too campaign. These brave women shared their story with me, and gave me permission to share it with you. Our experiences vary widely across the spectrum, but they are all valid, they are all shocking, and they all have the capability to make us feel degraded, devalued, and drained.

Please be respectful as you read through these stories. Let your heart ache with the young childen who didn't know they could say no, the teenagers who were afraid to tell their parents, the grown women who believed it couldn't happen to them. Bear witness to the suffering of others, and stand up. Say enough is enough and demand that every human deserves to be treated with respect and dignity. Do it so that my daughters and your sons and daughters never have to say, "me too."

Warning this post has many depictions of sexual assault and could be triggering to those who have faced similar trauma. Be gentle with yourself, friends.

​#1:​"There are so many it's hard to narrow it down.​I was sexually assaulted as a child by several different family members. I didn't tell my parents until my early twenties because I always thought my mom wouldn't be able to handle it emotionally.When I did finally talk my fears were confirmed. It would've been better for me to tell my conservative Christian parents that I was gay than to tell them I had been violated. My mom didn't speak to me for over a month and my dad changed the subject and acted like I hadn't said anything.

When I was 15 I was raped by my much older boyfriend. Took me over a year, and a suicide attempt, before I told my parents. My dad was irritated at me for the timing and location of telling them, my mom asked me if I had had an abortion because all sex leads to pregnancy in her mind.In college I dated an abusive drunk. There were times when I would hide in my apartment while he banged on my doors and windows and screamed at me to let him in. I knew if I did the consequences would be much worse. We lived in a small town and I wasn't sure how to escape him when I knew I could potentially see him every day. The end of the relationship was when I went to the bar with friends to celebrate a friend's birthday. He came to the bar, pulled me out of my seat and dragged me out. I drove him home and he refused to get out of my car. So I started walking and he chased me down and beat me in the grass in front of his apartment complex. I have vivid memories of him laughing in my face as he shook me and slapped me. Miraculously I got away and I ran until I couldn't breathe anymore. The next day I had to get my purse back from him. He told me it was my fault for making him angry. My mom told me it was my fault for not listening when she told me she didn't like him.

I was running by an elementary school when I was catcalled by a group of boys hanging out in front of the school. When I said something about it on social media, that it was shocking to have 5th graders comment on my sexy legs, I was told by a family member that I should just take it as a compliment. Last week I was walking home from dropping my oldest off at school, pushing a stroller. A man riding a bike passed me and said "good morning sexy mama." I turned around thinking I was just overhearing a neighbor flirting with his wife or something, only to realize he was talking to me.The look on his face made me walk three extra streets to make sure he wasn't following me home."​

#2:​"When I was 7, I had a best friend that lived across the street. I spent many summer days at her house swimming and hanging out. She didn’t come over to my house as much because I didn’t have a pool! I would go over every single day when I knew she was home from kindergarten (she was younger than me), ring the doorbell and ask her mom “can Jane play?” (I’ve changed the name to protect the innocent)

Her mom was sweet and as years went by I always thought of her as a single mom and a second mom. She was married but her husband wasn’t around much. She would mow the lawn which my mom found mesmerizing and I found it bad ass. I just remember he had stacks of Playboy magazines in a certain area of the house that us naughty girls would take a peek at when we knew no one was looking. I found it so sneaky and mysterious and at the same time I found it creepy that her dad had so many of the magazines out in the open for his two young daughters to see (Jane has a sister who was 3 years older)!Of course I had never seen a magazine like Playboy before. When her dad was around I didn’t feel as safe since I didn’t know him as well, and because I knew he fancied Playboy. Also I remember my sisters used to say he was creepy and that they felt like he looked at them inappropriately when they would see him outside. One day we were swimming (I was about 9 I think) and he picked me up and threw me in the deep end of the pool! I could swim but I was no Phelps (don’t know any bad ass female swimmer’s names...sorry). I was terrified and shocked that the man I hardly knew did that to me and made me feel even more leary about him. I guess he assumed I was like my friend Jane and would enjoy it and knew how to swim good?

Either way I went home that day feeling a little traumatized and I told my mom. She was furious and wanted to stomp right over there and tell him off. I begged her not to. I think I didn’t want my future summer swim days to be jeopardized in any way. She didn’t say anything but made me promise that if anything like that ever happened again to tell her. It never did but something else happened. Now here’s where my #metoo story has a crazy twist and will leave you dumbfounded as it did me. I was sleeping over at Jane’s one night, one of the many many sleepovers I had already had, it being my second home and right across the street, and something happened in the middle of the night. Someone woke me and Jane by touching us inappropriately and wanting us to touch her inappropriately. Jane’s older sister, who I felt was like a sister to me, was the culprit. I didn’t scream, I didn’t try to get away, but I went along with it. I won’t get into details. I have never spoken with anyone about it until recently, about 5 years ago I told my husband. I didn’t really want to tell anyone but I felt like I had to finally get it off my chest after all these years. Jane and I were still BFF’s, we never talked about that and I kept going over all the time to swim, play and for sleepovers. I don’t think it ever happened again. I don’t remember it happening again but now as an adult I wonder if it could have and I’ve blocked it out!? Jane eventually moved away to the west side of town which when I was a kid, it seemed like she moved to another far away city.

I didn’t see her as often but we kept in touch and my mom would make the trek every so often to take me over there for a sleepover. Her dad was never there and we had heard that there was something that happened with her dad; mortgage fraud or something about a dispute with his sister about a house which may be the reason they moved. And I think he went to jail for a while. All I know is I loved my friend Jane. She moved out of state to live with her grandparents when i was in 7th grade and we were pen pals for a while. For you youngens, a pen pal is someone you hand write letters to and put them in the mail! Imagine that! She enjoyed living with her grandparents, she was estranged from her dad, she missed her mom and sister. By the time I was in high school we had lost touch but she would call me when she was in town but we didn’t see each other. She seemed to be a little promiscuous, from what I understood. She was angry with her dad and told me he had been unfaithful to her mom and they had divorced (shocker!).​We became facebook friends and after I had my first child we arranged to meet for lunch and I took him with me. It was a nice visit but we had grown so apart that our childhood seemed so foggy and like it was another lifetime so long ago. And we didn’t seem to have anything in common. Then she invited me to go on a little ski trip together one weekend in Taos, just the two of us. Girl trip. We stayed one night and it was fun. Like we were kids having a sleepover again. We caught up with each other, we had burping contests, just like the good old days. We talked about what was going on with our family members. Her dad was trying to have a relationship with her and she wouldn’t have it. I thought now is my chance. Now we can talk about what happened that night. Did she even remember? I had so many questions for her. Did her sister do that to her often? Was her sister abused by her dad and that’s how she learned it? Was Jane abused by her dad? Did she have a happy childhood? I never got to ask her all the questions I had. It wouldn’t come out. I thought maybe she was going to talk about it. Maybe that’s why she wanted to go on this trip. To get stuff off her chest. Neither of us uttered a word about it. We haven’t seen each other since. I still have fond memories of our childhood minus that thorn that I’ve kept a deep secret.

I see her occasional Facebook post but we really are like strangers now. I know she had several boyfriends and finally had met the one she was engaged to. We chatted via Facebook one late nate when she saw I was active and confided in me that the man she was in love with and about to marry had cheated. The engagement was off and she was devastated. She’s still single and I always wish the best for Jane and I hope she’s happy. Thanks for giving this platform to anonymously share my story. It was cathartic for me to write about it. "

#3:​"I attended a party my freshman year of college to celebrate the end of Greek Week, a competition among sororities and fraternities. My sorority was paired with a fraternity and we made some new friendships through this. At the celebration after Greek Week we went to the fraternity house and were having a great time. We walked over from our house and I was with my best friend and roommate. I had not had anything to drink and when offered a drink, from my dance partner and FRIEND, I politely asked for a water to which he "obliged". My roommate was hanging out with some of her friends and all of a sudden, I was waking up in a room that I had never been in and had no recollection of walking to.

I frantically looked for my phone to call my roommate and had a hard time processing that I also didn't have all of my clothes on. My head was pounding, I had no voice after a long week of singing and cheering, and I felt incredibly helpless. I shot up out of the bed and found my pants and my phone and couldn't find my shoes. I wandered downstairs to find my roommate who must have known what was going on from the look on my face. Without shoes on, she held my hand as we walked back to our house and went and woke up my "Big Sister". My lack of voice made communicating really difficult and the fact that I honestly couldn't describe what had happened in the 4 hours between when we go to the party and when I stumbled around finding my roommate well after 2 am. My big sister and my roommate drove me to the hospital where the nurses repeatedly asked me how much I had had to drink, which was NOTHING, and harassed my friends to make me tell the truth. They offered to call the police but urged me to inform them of how much I had had to drink or they might not even come. I looked at my friends and told them I couldn't handle this horrible treatment and that I wanted to go home. My friends were my absolute advocates and made the nurses give me a drug test, antibiotics, the morning after pill, and administer an HIV test. I was not on birth control, had just gotten out of my high school long relationship, and couldn't process what was happening. My HIV came back negative with instruction to come back in 6 months for another one, and I had high levels of GHB in my system. We went home and I seriously cannot remember how the next week went.

Throughout the week after, older girls in my sorority who were friends with this guy continued to ask for my story, "give them the details", asking me if I had led him on and what really happened. This was miserable as my mind made up details as to what happened. I didn't really know. I know I was naked, I know it felt like I'd had sex, I know that he didn't use protection, and I knew that I lost over 4 hours from my night, but it wasn't a feeling of having been asleep. The President of my sorority called me to her room one day and told me to sit down. She had spoken with the President of the fraternity that this guy was in and that they were going to kick him out and he was being forced to move out. I was shocked at first that I hadn't been asked if this was okay with me, but realized I needed these people to do this for me whether or not I asked for it. The president of the fraternity called me over and over that week pressing me for details and telling me that "his brother would have nowhere to go if they kicked him out and had him move out" and eventually I told them to let him stay. I didn't want to feel anymore guilty than I already did.

My friend told me about free counseling that my university offered and I immediately made an appointment and got some help. I learned that the best way to deal with this was for me to talk about it, and teach others about it, be the "unlikely" victim that shows a group of younger women how to be safe and how to cope. The next semester I had elected to take a swimming class and the first day I went, I changed into my bathing suit, sat on the bleachers with one of my good friends from high school who through this all knew what had happened, and out walks the guy who assaulted me. I panicked. Of all the places I could encounter him for the first time, it was while I was in a bathing suit feeling very vulnerable. My friend, who is a guy, picked up on what was going on (friends who understand you without words are really just the best), and he told me it would be okay and he wouldn't leave my side. He told me he would support me and drop the class with me if I wanted and I decided that I couldn't let my life be dictated by a bad man. We stuck the class out and I never talked to him once. I cried on the way to almost every class but overall, I am glad that I made the decision to stay.

Fast forward 2 years and I'm at the gynecologist getting an annual exam and they hit me with the news that I had stage 4 HPV. I went in for my biopsy and I was hysterical and shaking the entire time. The poor nurse was so confused wondering if it hurt. I told her what happened and she let me talk for 20 minutes. They prescribed me a medication that ended up giving me an esophageal ulcer and I felt like I was sick for SO LONG. I hadn't brought any of this on myself and I shouldn't have had to go through it. I was safe with my 1 previous partner and this was SO UNFAIR. I was mad. For the first time in a few years, I was really, really mad. I stayed mad for a few months and had a lot of difficulty with physical interactions with the guy I was dating at the time. He didn't understand, which was okay. How could he? I dated around and honestly made some bad choices in sexual partners, something I personally was morally opposed to but I kept acting out. I couldn't make myself realize that I didn't need to do that to be loved and accepted. I finally met a guy my senior year of college that I fell in love with at first sight. We had a long distance relationship off the bat and I felt real love, even if it didn't last. He saved me and probably never even knew it. He didn't do anything other than show me love from hundreds of miles away.

When I started dating my now husband, I decided to be open with him immediately about this part of my life. How sometimes, for no reason, physical touch HURT me on the inside and I sometimes freaked out. He was so loving. I saw on Facebook one day that my rapist got married and I remember sending my best friend a barrage of texts detailing how AWFUL AND UNFAIR that was. I don't think I've seen him now for about 3 years but songs, people, dates, and the recent storm of men and women coming forward with their stories has brought up a lot of memories. I think the weirdest part is that I don't know if they are real memories. I don't know what happened during my assault. I don't know if it hurt, how long it lasted, where he went afterwards, or what he said to make me come to his room. I don't even know if I participated or if I was "asleep".

At some point in the years following I got a text from a random number apologizing for ever hurting me. That this person had been coerced by friends to try to hook up with me and he was sorry. I never replied but I know that this was him. I don't think I'll ever forgive him for doing that to me. For turning me into, even temporarily, a person who wasn't me and who was self destructive. I hear about forgiveness at church a lot, and I always contemplate forgiving him, really making the effort to forgive him, and I have yet to get there, which is okay. I made it out the other side of this as best as I could. I am healthy, in a healthy marriage, and have spoken to classes, my sorority sisters, coworkers, and online about my experience. I have to say, one of the hardest things about this is seeing people who were also raped and assaulted, not make it out as well as me. Who spiraled into a dark place and have yet to climb out. That isn't fair. Why was I given the strength to make it and they weren't? Its crushing to me and I take every opportunity to love these women and let them know that there isn't a right or wrong way to deal with this.

There isn't a perfect amount of recovery time. Letting them know that while we went through something similar, we all view it and react so differently-our experiences can't be lumped into one group. It isn't fair that this man broke me down, and that men have broken other women down because they had the power to do so and it makes me MAD. I think its okay that sometimes I get mad about it because I never get mad and people take me more seriously then. I will never shy away from supporting a victim of sexual assault, harassment, domestic, or stranger violence. God gave me supernatural strength to recover and a gift to be there for others and I plan to use that gift for forever. "​

​#4:​"I was working at a casino at a job I loved. I loved interacting with customers as the main part of my job and I felt like I was great at it. There was a frequent, particular guest of the casino/hotel that was very wealthy and always kind and generous to me. I had heard stories about the crazy things he was involved in, but I treated him like any other guest and he often tipped me very well. One day when I was doing my job, this guest who was highly inebriated cornered me in a place that was not visible to anybody else. I tried to talk myself out of it and let him know I needed to get back to work and that my bosses needed me to go report to them. This man who was not a large man but taller than me used one hand to pin one of my hands to the wall behind me and his other hand went up my shirt and pulled my bra to the side. I was fighting hard with my movements but I couldn't scream.

I had been assaulted once before-how could this happen again? It felt like a lifetime that we were in this corner away from anybody who could help. He tried to kiss me but he was so drunk that his movements were clumsy. He eventually took his hand out of my shirt but continued to feel around on top of my clothes all over my body. He let me go and stumbled back to his friends. I went right back to work, feeling like I'd been away for 20 minutes, and finished my shift. I didn't tell my bosses but confided in one of my closest friends who worked in a different department. We were not romantically involved but had strong feelings for each other and he stormed into my boss's office to tell them what happened. My bosses were shocked and didn't quite know what to do.

After a few days of thinking on it, they decided that the best thing for me to do was not to say anything, and that if I saw him in my area, that I could come inside and somebody would switch positions with me for the day. They explained how much money this man spent at the casino and hotel as well as reiterated to me his involvement with bad people. Bad, important people, who could hurt me if I spoke poorly of him. I never pursued anything. I would have had to give information to Tribal Police, potentially having him banned from the casino losing his money that he constantly spent there, and potentially have back lash from higher ups at the Casino.

I had a lot of people who had my back to protect me at my job from that point on, but it still really sucked that I was very restricted on doing anything legally. There are approximately a billion cameras at this casino, and I was able to confirm with a friend in security that no camera sees the area where my assault happened. I ended up leaving that job and have never seen the man again."

#5:

"Growing up was confusing. I was taught from an early age that my body was something to fear, and that it would incite men to act, say, and do awful things. That I’d be to blame for something happening, because I should know better than to put myself in that circumstance. Sexuality was framed as good yet dirty, and the subtleties of consent weren’t gone over. It was all very black and white as far as sex went; no sex, no contact of any sort before marriage, but your body ceased to belong to you when you married. When did my body ever belong to me? It belonged to my parents, then my spouse. I felt like property. Manipulation to force or “imply” consent wasn’t something that was discussed, nor did I think to question it. I was forced to hug and kiss family members I didn’t know for fear of embarrassing my parents by my “rude” behavior. Saying no to an authority figure was out of the question. I don’t blame my parents for any of the following specifics; they did the best they could with what they knew. But society needs to change. Girls (and boys) shouldn’t be raised with consent being a question. If your answer isn’t a resounding “yes”, it’s a “no”. Period. I shouldn’t be in my 30’s figuring out my boundaries. I shouldn’t be reliving my past experiences. We all have the right to feel safe, and it’s amazing to me that in this day and age, we still don’t. Age 9: a boy reacted in anger with me by lifting up my shirt in public, at school, in front of other students. Age 11/12: on the way home from the State Fair, my sister and I were subjected to a drive-by flashing by a man clearly well into his 30’s, driving without his pants on and exposing his erection. He changed lanes to meet us despite our moving seats from one side of the bus to the other. I still remember his face. Age 13/14: a teacher (in his late 30’s-40’s) at my Christian school made many comments about my pleasing appearance, commenting that I “have very nice legs”, and that he didn’t know “what the boys were thinking” since I didn’t have a boyfriend. I’d heard other girls had similar complaints about this teacher. As far as I know, he’s still at that school. Age 14: my boyfriend fingered me in the movie theater, despite my saying “no”. When a physical response was reached, though it was a reflex, not enjoyed, I was laughed at and earned a new nickname that spread around his social circle. Age 15: my former boyfriend made loud, disparaging remarks about my body and looks, made up stories about how I was sexually, and turned me in to school authorities for supposedly “rubbing it in his face” that I had a new relationship. A peck on the lips before class turned into reporting me for “making out” in the hallway. When I relayed my side of the story, I was dismissed, and told not to “provoke (him)”. Between the ages of 14 and 18, countless pressures from boyfriends for oral sex and vaginal intercourse. I wasn’t ready, and communicated such. The pressures still came, along with emotional abuse (and occasional physical abuse) stemming from their sexual frustration. I often was called a tease. Age 16: an adult family friend (nearly a decade older) expressed interest in me. I’d known him since I was 13. We talked online and had an inappropriate relationship (given my age) throughout my 17th year. After I’d turned 18, I woke one morning after he’d been staying over after a party, and he was standing at the foot of my bed. He then took off his towel, crawled into my bed, naked and wet from his shower. He didn’t ask, and he used my body. I’d had a longtime crush on him, but he played with my feelings and my body like they were nothing. He would tell me we had a relationship, but nobody else knew- he didn’t tell his friends, and I most certainly didn’t tell my parents. Age 17: a long-time boyfriend “gave his virginity” to me, but didn’t give me the choice to choose to give mine to him. His dad was in the next room playing a computer game. I felt empty, and confused. I loved him. But I hadn’t consented to sex. Age 22-24: Most of my marital sex was obligatory, unenjoyable, and non-consensual. It was my “duty” to provide my body to my husband, no questions asked (according to church). After all, if he strayed, it was my fault for not providing the sex he wanted. I endured painful, uncomfortable intimacy. He strayed anyway, and later married the woman he was seeing while we were still married. Age 26: Briefly worked at a strip club to make ends meet, was groped every shift, and was subjected to lots of lewd comments. Men seemed to feel entitled to my body, simply because of the nature of the work. However, it was against the club rules to grope and fondle dancers. The clientele rarely complied. Just because a job involves the consent to be gazed upon and close to someone doesn’t entitle one to get physical. It’s a fine line, but it’s a line. Age 27-28: Was in a relationship with an emotionally and physically abusive partner, who cheated and subjected me to various health risks due to his promiscuity. He tried to keep this a secret, but I later found that he’d had multiple sexual partners of both sexes. I did not consent to being in such a risky relationship. I didn’t consent to possible STI’s as a result of his behavior. He tried to blame me for his actions.

I can’t remember all instances of unsolicited comments on my figure, or looks, or remarks on how said features make some man feel. I’ve been called at on the street, I’ve been sung to while walking alone, followed in convenience stores, and propositioned online. As infuriating as all of this is, and painful to rehash (and downright unbelievable looking back), I refuse to let it rob me of my joy today. Unfortunately, the memories will never leave, and some things left more of a mark than others, but we are not alone. That is both sad and encouraging. I only hope future generations have it better."​

#6:

"For a long time I didn't see these as counting. But now that I have a daughter I know that I would not want her to be treated this way. Even though my experience was "mild", I want to acknowledge that it is not okay for our autonomy to be compromised. I was about 10 or 11 and playing on the slip and slide at a neighbor's house. My friend's brother and his friend waited at the end of the slip and slide and caught us. The brother held onto me and intentionally touched my vulva and moved his fingers around. His friend was also chanting vulgar things that I didn't understand at the time, but could sense that they were sexual. I never told anyone until now, 22 years later. Another time I woke up while sleeping at a cousin's house to see my younger male cousin standing over me and touching me over my underwear. I never said anything to him and wrote it off as him being curious. But now I know I wouldn't want my sons to think that expression of curiousity is okay. "

#7:

"There are so many of these stories, I'm not sure I can bear to tell them all. One has recently flooded my memory after many dormant years, and that's the one I'm choosing to share with you today. When I was seventeen, I made a friend. He was a friend of a guy I had dated and moved on from. He was twenty or twenty one and we had a class together at the local community college. He started asking to hang out after class and I was happy to have company to study. I made it clear very early on that I had no romantic interest in him and saw him as a friend. I had started dating someone else casually, even. But this guy was relentless in his romantic pursuit of me. I didn't want to appear rude or be a "bitch," so I kept up our friendship and figured after our class ended, I could stop hanging out with him. One day, he invited me over to study for a big test we had. I had just started exclusively dating the guy I was casually seeing, but I needed to study for the test, so I obliged. I showed up and he was dressed incredibly fancy and his parents had the table set for a huge dinner. Again, I didn't want to appear rude, so I went along with the dinner. I didn't know how to act when his dad said, "It's good to see _____ have a girlfriend over. We haven't had many girls here since the last one ended badly." so I just smiled and nodded. After the uncomfortable dinner, we went to his room to study. He closed the door, which seemed odd. I noticed a hole in his door asked him about it. He casually said, "Oh, I got mad at my ex and she kept trying to leave, so I closed the door and punched a hole in it." Alarm bells started to ring in my head, but again, I was afraid of being rude. He never once opened a book, and put a movie on instead. I tried to study, but before the opening credits ended, he was all over me, forcing me to kiss him while I shoved him away. He knew I had a boyfriend, I thought. This had to be a misunderstanding, right? He unzipped my pants and shoved his hand down them while I tried to squirm away. I told him I didn't want him to be doing any of this, and he said, "I promise you'll like it." I laid there, shocked and frozen while he put his fingers inside of me. And the next words he said will haunt me forever, "I can't believe you're cheating on your boyfriend with me." He had me. I couldn't tell anyone because I shouldn't have been there. I had a boyfriend, why was I alone, behind a locked door with some other guy? My mom called me and saved the day. I had to get up. I had to move. I left and cried the whole way home. I texted my best friend and told her "I kissed ______" even though I hadn't. He had forced his lips on mine while I shoved him away, but with those ten words, he had made me the bad guy. I was a cheater. I deserved to be violated. Thats what I thought.

I wish I could go back and hug that poor, scared girl in that bedroom. I wish I could tell her that she didn't do anything wrong. I wish I could teach her that she is valuable and beautiful and she doesn't have to absolve the guilt of a sexual predator. But I can't. All I can do is scream my stories from the rooftops and teach the next generation of girls that they deserve better. That I will fight every day to make the world a place where they don't have to fear their friends and blame themselves."​

#8:

"When I was 11 a friend and I were walking and two men in a car drove by and Cat-called us...I remember feeling so guilty and shameful. I also remember several years later when I was in 7th grade and I was spending the day with a school-mate. We had to run some errands and went to a grocery store. To men were following my friend and I and speaking in Spanish about us. Her mother turned and replied in Spanish that we were children and they should be ashamed. Her anger was ferocious and I felt guilty and ashamed and proud all at once.

Another time I was traveling and I was at a local store when a man just reached out and grabbed my breast. I was in complete shock and while I stood there not knowinf what to do a friend who was with me slapped his hand and began to raise her voice. Not wanting attention, he disappeared into the crowd. I’ll never forget his demeanor-his sense of ownership of the body of a stranger. It was an awful feeling that didn’t leave me for some time. "

#9:​"I have been coming back to this over and over. I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know where to start. I started to write about my boss when I was 18 who used to come into the prep kitchen where I was alone and he poked at me with the day-old baguettes. He'd say to me does your boyfriend satisfy you, do you want to take this home and play with it. And he laughed this evil laugh and he'd walk out. He was old and cranky and wealthy and at that time in my mind he was powerful looking back Now he was nothing.

Then I started thinking about a mistake I made when I got into a car with for boys when I was 16. I thought they were my friends and they wanted to hang out. It was late middle of the night my parents were out of town no one knew I was out and they had their hands all over me. They were putting their hands up my shirt and down my pants and the driver saved me from being raped but I was already violated. I thought it was my fault because I got in the car them. And I've never told anybody.

When I was 12 my perpetrator came to school to pick me up and I was terrified it had been at least 8 years and I couldn't take it anymore. I finally told my sister about it and turns out all four of my sisters we're keeping the same secret.

When I was 20 my boyfriend was out of town and I went to a party with his friends and I had too much to drink. I went to my car because I knew that I was intoxicated and I woke up two two of his friends violating me. I never told him.I've spent the past 20 years wondering how I allowed myself to be a victim so many times.I've had friends Neighbors acquaintances ask to see my breasts to lift my shirt to touch their "junk".I have three daughters and I'm worried for them."​

#10:

I was in an Old Town Gift Shop looking at dream catchers for my new bedroom. I was alone in a room, as my husband, of not even twenty four hours wandered aimlessly looking at New Mexican gifts. My friends were in a different store, it was quiet, and I felt safe. As I reached up to touch a dream catcher, I felt a man start to touch me. It wasn’t the innocence or tenderness of my husband. It was the malice of a man who whispered, "shhh, sexy," in my ear.Tears began to fill my eyes as I froze in fear and humiliation. I was a bride yesterday! Didn't he know? Didn't he care to look at the wedding ring on my finger? As quickly as the attack started, it stopped. I looked around, ashamed that I had just been molested inside of a store that resided in a town I grew up in. I looked down at my clothes

Did I tempt him? Did I provoke this? I pulled uncomfortably at my turtle neck and jeans... so angry that society would instill that this was somehow my fault no matter what I was wearing. I struggled to find the words to tell my husband and friends as they ran towards me, tears streaming down my pale face. The shop owners and security guards pressed for answers I was terrified to give, and in shock to disclose. It felt like a small attack to what other women endure, but it was the end of an era of feeling safe for me.​

#11:"I worked at the pro shop at the golf course connected with the University I attended. When I was hired my boss warned me that some of the older customers could sometimes be inappropriate toward the female workers, but he told me he would handle it if I needed him to. I learned pretty quickly who he was talking about, and learned how to handle it or avoid the ones who were incessant (meaning drunk.) If it got out of hand I would tell my boss, but usually I just ignored the nonsense and did my job.

However, one of my co-workers, Ray, loved flirting with me. I didn't mind the attention, particularly because there were times when things were slow and there wasn't much else to do but banter. Eventually though he started being very explicit about things he would do to me if I didn't have a boyfriend. I stopped participating in the banter and he was wounded, cold, even mean sometimes as a result. The I broke up with my boyfriend.

About a week later he started coming up behind me and pressing me into the counter and whispering sexually explicit things in my ear. I would tell him to stop and he would walk away laughing, saying he knew I liked it. This went on for almost a month. I couldn't afford to quit my job so I was actively looking for a new job. One day I was leaning over the counter, working on some paperwork. I thought I was alone until Ray came up behind me and had his hand up my skirt and a finger inside of me. I tried to get away, but he pushed me face down onto the top of the counter. I could feel his penis between my legs when suddenly he pulled me off the counter and told me to act natural so that the customer heading in the door wouldn't think I was a "dirty bitch who seduces her co-workers."

I managed to avoid him until my boss came in an hour later and I told him what happened. He told me to go home for the day and he would deal with it. I dreaded coming to work the next day because I knew Ray was on the schedule too. But someone else was there when I walked in. I asked him where Ray was. He angrily told me that he had been transferred to another department. I realized that was the job he had applied for twice before, and said as much.

"Yeah, I guess your lies about him actually helped. And as long as no other bitches try to spread vicious rumors about him in the next year, they'll erase your accusations from his personnel file."

Happy New Year, Sisters!​It seems only fitting that the first feature of 2018 is someone very small who takes up a large part of my heart.A year and a half ago, I wrote about my daughter, Sawyer. She was two and a half at the time. And today, I am sharing my baby girl, Hadley Rae, with you all as she hits the two and half mark as well!Hadley is, to put it simply, pure magic. She came into the world in a whirlwind of noise and chaos, and yet, she has become my calm amidst a storm. It is no secret that I suffered from pretty severe postpartum depression after Hadley was born. I carried a newborn, a nineteen month old, and a breast pump with me everywhere I went for what felt like an eternity, and eventually my inability to take care of myself caught up with me and left me utterly broken.

After I got help, I realized how much my bond with Hadley helped me stay in touch with reality during the worst days, and how much could be learned from this confident, intense little girl.

Hadley is the polar opposite of her big sister. She is uniquely her own person and that makes me admire her so much.I, too, am a younger sister, and I spent most of my childhood trying to be my big sister. Not Hadley.Where Sawyer feels every single shade of emotion as if they are all shades of grey, Hadley feels black or white. She is either deliriously happy or on a rampage, and I love how sure she is of herself. She never questions whether she is allowed to feel a certain way, she just trusts herself. She is my nurturer, my cuddler, and my hand holder. She loves baby dolls with an intensity usually saved for Shakespearean characters. In fact, she does everything in life with a dramatic level of intensity. She has dark eyes that are like deep stormy pools, and a smile that can outshine the sun. ​I'm convinced she will become an Olympian, a Hollywood director, or President of the United States, ​

​After the struggles of becoming a new mom stilled, I was renewed with a new sense of purpose. These little women I am raising remind me everyday to make choices to better the world for them.And to better their little world and teach them the things all little girls must learn:

That they are brave and brilliant and powerful and kind , That this world is theirs for the taking, and all they need is to believe that with their whole heart. That they owe no one a smile (Hadley will tell you that with some serious side eye, random lady in target who told her she'd be prettier if she would just smile).That they owe themselves respect and honor. And that you won't be everyone's cup of tea, but you will be the sweetest tea in the world to the right people - YOUR people. ​

​Hadley embodies the spirit of Simply Sisterhood.​She reminds me to love myself, to trust myself, and to throw love around like confetti (although she'd prefer sprinkles, preferably from chocolate doughnuts, thanks). The relationship between my two girls reminds me that you don't have to have everything in common with someone to be their friend or enjoy their company. They are unique and beautiful, and when I look at them, I see all of you reflected back at me. They represent the heart behind this project and the legacy of kindness, courage, empowerment and encouragement I want to leave imprinted on the world.

Welcome to the Sisterhood, my Hadley Rae. ​You are a powerful storm and a gentle wind all wrapped into one beautiful being, and your joy and ferocity will change the world, just as you have forever changed me.

Morgan here!This week has me thinking A LOT about sexual harassment and assault.Isn't it weird how sexual crimes seem to be the only ones in which victims are often told to keep silent?If we come forward, we are often guilted, shamed, harassed more, interrogated, etc.

So many women are finding their voice and wow, it is giving me so much hope and making me feel so empowered and connected to my sisters globally!

So what if we raise our voices together? I am inviting you to submit your story, no matter how long or short, how seemingly small or big it is (they all matter) and I will share them all (anonymously) in a blog post. Even I won't know who you are when you submit you story!

This is a great way to find your voice without fear of retribution and sharing our stories can give hope to others.If you feel compelled to share, click here.

It is important to me that you know that you are heard, you are believed, and that you do not deserve what happened to you.​We stand beside you, sisters.Let's let our voices be heard.

​Hello Sisterhood! My name is Olivia Gassaway and I have the absolute joy of bringing you the story and inspiring perspectives of Simply Sisterhood’s creator, Morgan Scott. It seemed a bit odd to have Morgan write her own feature, although I’m sure it would be sensational, so I volunteered for the job. I have known Morgan for about eighteen years and she is still as sassy, strong-willed, wild, caring and fun as when we first met. Morgan is one of the most genuine people I know. Genuine meaning she is real, true, pure, and not counterfeit. She doesn’t ever try and cover anything up. Instead she shines light into the voids of the world. She finds out the best things about people and has a way with encouragement. She makes killer enchiladas and shines light in the lives of others just by being hospitable. She seeks out reason and combats darkness with her fierce loyalty to her convictions and loves challenging all the crap in the world.

So here are five things Morgan thinks you should know about her:

1. I love rap / hip hop music. People would never expect it, but when I drive by in my mom SUV wearing a cardigan, chances are I’m listening to Chance the Rapper or Kendrick Lamar and rapping along.

2. I am insanely accident prone. I tore my knee apart because I was messing around while snowboarding with my best friend, I am constantly twisting my ankles, and my junior year of college, I got hit by a car. I wasn’t injured (other than my bruised ego), but I laughed so hard after the fact that I’m pretty sure the gentleman who hit me thought I was crazy.

3. I love movies with weird or unhappy endings. That sounds sort of melancholy, but I just enjoy endings that make you think about a movie for days after you watch it. I also think the good guy ALWAYS winning is boring, and a little patronizing.​4. I love the color gold so much that friends are constantly sending me pictures of gold things they come across in stores. Gold earrings, gold home decor, gold shoes, ALL GOLD EVERYTHING!

5. I love being the hostess. If party planning wasn’t so expensive, I would throw a party at my house every month. I’m very much an introvert, but I love hearing the sounds of people laughing and enjoying themselves in my home!

“I was born and raised in Albuquerque/Tijeras and I have an older sister, Maggie, who is four and a half years older than me. We were homeschooled, and my parents gave us a really magical childhood. There was a lot of dysfunction around us, but at home it was just us and 5.5 acres of forestland where we would go outside and play. When we were younger my mom would ask us what we wanted to learn about, take whatever we were interested in and run with it. We did a lot of really fun things like putting on plays, going to museums and the zoo, etc. A lot of choices that I made as a really small kid were because of my older sister. She wanted to do ballet so I did ballet; she was interested in horses so I had to tag along to 4H, even though I was really scared of horses. I wanted to be her, and looked up to her so much. I still do!

When I was in fourth grade we moved to Albuquerque. We lived in a really tiny house that was one of my parents’ rental homes for about six months while we were looking for a house. Moving from a big house that my parents had built out in the mountains, to a more urban setting with a tiny backyard where my sister and I had to share a room (she was a teenager), let's just say it was an experience. We finally got our house in the North Valley and I felt like that was really magical too. We got to go on walks and had a lot of land and a trampoline. In a lot of ways my childhood was really, despite outside forces, just not typical. There was not a lot of stress or overscheduling or anything. I kind of just focused on one thing at a time. And for a long time that thing was dance. Things were honestly really good in my middle school teen years; during that time I met my three lifelong best friends.

First I met my best friend Deidra, we were in the same circle of friends but weren’t super close, But in high school that changed as we sort of separated from the rest of the girls in our group. ​ And then I met Pedro; we met when he pegged me in the head with a soccer ball and then said, ‘Hey I’m Pedro, sorry, and can you pass that back to me?’ And then I met Ben (who is now my husband of seven years!) someone introduced us and I asked him if he ever smiled and he said no, and then he walked away. I guess I met all of my best friends under kind of weird circumstances!​But we all became close, and I had a really good thing going on for a while. I had a really solid close group of friends and was involved in church, was dancing and then a lot of those things fell to the wayside."

​"For a brief period of time I went to a local public high school, and during my time there, I was sexually assaulted in the bathroom. That kind of sent my world into a spiral; I quit dance for a while, stopped hanging out with my friends and I had really, really bad anxiety. That was the first real challenge to that magical, innocent childhood that I had been privileged to have. It was kind of the first time that I really didn’t believe that the world was good anymore. My sister left for college right after that and I had a really hard time with her being gone just because I followed her around my whole existence. I had always looked to her to tell me who to be. There were a lot of shifts in my life that happened during that time that put me in with a different group of friends. They were quite a bit older than me and did life really differently from me. They introduced me to a new perspective that in a lot of ways challenged me and helped me grow, but I was maybe too naïve to perceive what was right and what was wrong anymore.I made a lot of really stupid choices and during that time I met my ex-boyfriend, who I think I can safely say is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. He was really, really methodical in how he isolated me from everyone in my life. He was critical of all the people who loved me to the point where I didn’t really believe that they loved me anymore. Looking through his eyes, my parents were too controlling, my sister was really naïve, and all of my friends were stupid. Anyone who questioned our relationship got put down to the point where they didn’t want to hang out with me anymore or I didn’t want to hang out with them anymore. I was really isolated and really alone. He was my first real boyfriend and there were no checks and balances in place. No one had ever really taught me about relationships. Really the only message that I had gotten was don’t have sex before you're married because that makes you a bad person, or makes you a chewed piece of gum, or impure or a whore.Our relationship was like a natural disaster. He isolated me from everyone and tore down my self-esteem. My sister had always told me who to be, but she was living three hours away and we weren’t close anymore so he was happy to step in and do that. Our relationship consisted of drama all the time, manipulation and abuse of pretty much every kind I had lost who I was and he really had free reign. He was extremely sexually abusive towards me but always made me think it was my fault. There was always something that I did to provoke whatever it was, or something was wrong with me, or I just didn’t understand that ‘this was how relationships worked’ because I was really naïve and was homeschooled. I had moved out of my parents' house and was living with Pedro and his brother, Mondo. Looking back, I feel really disconnected from that time in my life.

There was one morning that set in motion so many changes in my life. My ex-boyfriend dropped me off at work and we had had a pretty big fight. I was texting him on my break and he had said some really horrible hateful things to me that made me start crying. One of my coworkers came in the back and asked me what was wrong. I have no idea how we didn’t get fired, but we ended up sitting on the floor in the back for thirty minutes, while whoever was working was getting royally screwed up front , we took our headsets off so they couldn’t call us and we just talked. I opened up to her about my relationship and the struggles I was having and I just remember her telling me, ‘you are looking for the wrong things; that is not what love is. Love is not manipulation. Love is not control. Love is not constant fear of what’s going to happen if you act a certain way.’ She said, the person that you want to be with is the person who is going to make you laugh forever and who is still going to love you when you have gray hair, wrinkles and your body is saggy; you want someone you’re still going to want to play scrabble with when your kids have moved out.’ I went home and I texted my ex asking if he liked board games. His response was, ‘fucking board games? What are you, twelve years old?’ It just opened my eyes to what a mess everything was. I knew I needed to make some changes. I sat on my bed thinking and staring in my closet for two hours and then I pulled out my phone and texted my friend Ben. I told him that I missed him. We had been really good friends for a while, but my boyfriend had been threatened by him and told me not to talk to him anymore. Ben and I reconnected and began hanging out as friends.The first time we hung out again, we were at dinner and I asked, ‘do you like scrabble?’ His reply was, ‘I like scrabble, but my family plays this game called Take Two,’ and he started teaching me about this game and talking wildly with his hands and literally in that moment the world stopped and I thought, 'I’m going to marry this boy!'Within 6 months of that conversation, we were dating, within a year and a half we were engaged, and within two years we were married!"

​​"Ben is completely the opposite of everything that I was accustomed to and that had been portrayed to me of how relationships are supposed to be. I grew up in a culture where men are basically in charge all of the time. When your husband gets home from work you take his coat and hand him his dinner and take his shoes off. Women existed to serve men in my mind. That’s just kind of how I had seen things as I was raised and was also the attitude of the guy that I had dated, but to a much more extreme degree. And then there was Ben who was really nice to me and it freaked me out! I didn’t know how to cope with someone doing something nice for me purely because they cared and had no agenda. We’ve always been really good at communicating with each other but even if you get married really young you still bring a lot of garbage other people have dumped at your feet into the relationship and so working through that was really hard. He was the person who convinced me that I needed help for a lot of the things that I was dealing with. I went to a local church for counseling and that actually ended up being really damaging. It was kind of the first time I had really confided in anyone that I had been raped regularly for almost two years by my ex-boyfriend. I know the counselor didn’t have poor intentions, but what was communicated to me was that sometimes God allows bad things to happen when you’re not walking with him. And that doesn’t do anything for someone who has PTSD. That places all the blame that you already feel and the guilt that you already feel right back on you. Sexual assault is the only crime committed against someone that they feel guilty for, and what was said to me really damaged my perception of myself for a long time. It wasn’t until I had daughters that I saw myself in a completely different light. I think kids have the ability to make old things new again and they renew your hope. They’re pure and love unconditionally. They don’t have it in them to blame or heap shame on people. When you have kids you feel this responsibility to fix all of the problems or at least make the world a better place for them to grow up.

When I was twenty weeks pregnant with Sawyer we went in for an ultrasound and they sent me to the high risk ultrasound techs because I disclosed that I had asthma. I went in with Ben on his lunch break and it was supposed to be about twenty minutes to make sure our baby was growing properly and to find out the sex of the baby, which we were really excited about. About ninety minutes in I knew something was wrong and the tech said she just couldn’t get a clear picture of the baby’s face so she called the doctor in.He came in, looked at the ultrasound and said, ‘Ah yes! It’s a cleft lip alright!’My mind was immediately flooded with questions. The doctor told me there would be several complications associated with it. I asked if I would be able to breast feed and he told me that was a question better suited for her surgeon and I was like, ‘she has a surgeon?’ I made my return appointment, walked down the hallway, and collapsed in Ben’s arms overwhelmed with fear. We were going in to find out the sex of our baby and that was a big deal and all of the sudden, it wasn’t a big deal anymore.

We read as much as we could about clefts and were very much at peace with our new situation pretty quickly. We began telling our family and friends that Sawyer would be born with a cleft. My dad and I haven’t ever been amazing at communicating with each other, but his words gave me the most peace, out of anything we heard in those first few weeks.He said, ‘you know, you can’t change what’s happening and that it feels scary right now, but I can tell you that two years from now she’s going to be a little toddler running around in this living room and none of us are even going to be thinking about it.’ And when that moment came two years later, he was right. Sawyer is amazing and I feel so blessed to be her mama. She’s exactly the baby that I prayed for. "

"Now looking back it seems like a lot, she was born, went to the NICU, and we dealt with feeding issues. It put pressure on me to fatten her up so she would be ready for surgery and she wouldn’t get sick. When she was seven months she had a four and a half hour surgery and at ten months she had a three and a half hour surgery. From the outside, it seems like so much to deal with. But I just thought, ‘She’s just my kid and I love her’ and nothing else mattered. Is it scary to hand off your seven month old to a surgeon and not know what she’s going to look like and sit in a waiting room for close to five hours?It’s fucking terrifying. But you just do what you do for your kids and you don’t question it. You don’t have time to sit and think about how you’re going to react you just love them. I think that she has changed so much of my perception about how society places value on people. Sawyer is legitimately the nicest human I know. She cares more about people, is more intuitive and more compassionate at three years old than I think anyone could ever hope to attain in their lifetime. When I look back at myself crying in that hallway after my ultrasound, I wish I could tell myself what life is like right now and that all of the struggles; the two surgeries and countless doctor visits, the two babies under two, etc. All of it is so worth it for the love that these two little girls bring to the lives of everyone who knows them. Being a stay at home mom, life can be so lonely sometimes. I’m constantly surrounded by chatter, but not with other adults. There’s something that’s really important and vital about just being able to be real with people and not feel like you have to present your best side to people in fear that they’ll judge you. It can be really isolating and really lonely and I don’t think I realized that until I had really bad postpartum depression after my youngest daughter, Hadley was born. I couldn’t feel things and I couldn’t connect with people and it was so frustrating. When your friends are working all the time or in school or just have their own lives and you’re sitting at home drowning in babies, it just felt like my life was completely spiraling out of control and no one could understand. The great thing is that the feelings of isolation were what prompted me to want to start this project! I wanted to give people a platform to answer the questions that nobody was asking and to talk about the things that hurt, and to talk about the things that make them really happy and talk about what they're excited about. I wanted to give people a place to connect and it’s interesting because I feel like a lot of the people who have really gotten the point of the project have been really open about it. A lot of their friends and family don’t know the things that they’ve said to me and that’s cool because it’s giving the people around them more insight into who they are, which is important. It’s also giving people insight into themselves. I think hearing about yourself from someone else’s perspective and seeing gorgeous photos of yourself or hearing the things that are picked out during an interview allows people to see themselves from a different perspective, which is super cool.

Sisterhood is powerful and I think that sometimes society isolates us from building those strong connections. Women can accomplish a lot of stuff when they work together and so it benefits people who don’t want women to accomplish a lot of stuff to keep us isolated from each other, or in competition with each other, or feeling like we have to tear each other down. I just hope that my kids feel like they have a village of people, especially women to support them and love them. And not just in a superficial way, but people who really want to know them."​

"There are hundreds of women that have inspired and shaped me into the woman I am today, but three specific women come to mind. The first one is my mom. My mom has been through a lot and it doesn’t seem to faze her. I know she’s struggled and had a tumultuous childhood and teenage years but she’s really resilient. She genuinely doesn’t give a shit what people think. When she decided she wanted to homeschool me and my sister, tons of people told her it was a bad idea and she didn’t care what they thought. She’s also really brave. She has always been really artistic and she decided after we were older, around middle school, she wanted to pursue art and she built a career. She built her business and gained a lot of recognition without changing herself. She doesn’t pretend to be something she’s not to make people like her or want to buy her art, she’s just herself. She’s always thinking about other people. She maybe did that too much, especially when we were kids. So now my sister and I really want to take care of her because she rarely thinks about herself. I’m always really happy when she does stuff for herself like going to Taos with her art buddies. My mom is also really encouraging to me because I parent against the grain compared to a lot of people I know. She’s just always telling me that I’m doing what is best for my kids.Secondly, I think about my Nana, who very well may be the female version of the Dos Equis man. She’s just a force of nature. She had four kids under six in her early twenties and her husband passed away unexpectedly. She didn’t have an education or a job and all the sudden she was on her own and at that point her youngest child was forty days old. I have no idea how she is the amazing woman that she is. She’s just one of those people you meet and realize that they are incredibly special. She loves people and is really devout in her faith and she’s really sassy and it’s coming out more as she’s older; she can be a little salty. My Nana is eighty-five and in the past few years she ripped up all the carpet in her house by herself because she wanted to put down hardwood. She’s constantly outside burning weeds and moving firewood. She heats her house with her fire in the winter and is really resourceful. She goes against the grain. I seriously think just by sheer force of will, she makes things happen. She can make something out of nothing, and I think that’s really beautiful.My third person is Ms. Lana, who was my dance teacher for many years. I feel like she was the first teacher who really invested in who I was, not just as a dancer, but as a person. She really believed in me and made me passionate about something I didn’t like. She ignited my love for ballet. I felt like she saw the diversity amongst all the people she interacted with and all her students and appreciated them individually. I think that that really has inspired me, not just in my time as a dancer teacher, but also in how I interact with people in life. Seeing that everybody you meet comes from a different place and has different things on their plate but everyone has value whether or not you’re willing to invest in them and see their potential.

I never really thought about what being a woman was until I became a mom. I feel like a lot of people talked to me about how to be a good wife, but never really talked about what it meant to be a woman. I started thinking I’m the person that my kids are going to learn how to be a woman from and what does that even mean? And so I started thinking more about what womanhood is and how being female has affected my experiences. The most frustrating thing for me, is that I noticed this pattern of not being valued; being eye candy, but not being allowed to have an opinion. I would literally have people tell me to stop talking or that I didn’t understand simple concepts. I had always been sent this message that my opinion didn’t matter, and I think I got sent that message a lot when I was young and that sort of groomed me for being in an abusive relationship.In that relationship my no didn’t matter, so nothing I said held weight I guess. And it wasn’t really until I started writing that I realized that my words did have power and did carry weight. I think that I’ve kind of embraced more of being a woman since becoming a mom because I want my girls to have that person to look to. I want to teach my girls to walk in a room and feel like they belong there no matter who’s in the room and I want them to know if they have something to say it matters no matter if people roll their eyes, or talk over them, or interrupt them or try to explain their own experiences to them, or belittle their opinions and experiences. If more women were emboldened to use their voice, the world could be a different place. And today, more than ever, more women are finding and using their voices to change the world, and that is what makes me so hopeful for the future we are creating for Sawyer and Hadley and little girls everywhere!”​

{All photos are property of Simply Sisterhood and Smitten by a Promise Photography. ​Please refrain from cropping, editing or copying photos.}

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Olivia was born and raised in Albuquerque and loves it! She is passionate about leadership and learning. She makes her living off of extremely amazing tea parties and teaching people about dance. She is currently learning how to play tennis and enjoys back handing the crap out of the ball. One day she hopes to have a bull terrier named Tony and create an amazing dance production. ​Her feature can be read here.

​My first memory of any kind of play was when I was about three years old. I was out in the backyard and I remember my dad had a ball. It was new and fun and we tossed it around. I don't remember it as being play, just that my dad had a ball and it was something new for me.​My next memories are of moving right next door to my grandparents. I mean RIGHT next door. Our houses were about fifty feet apart. In the country. Next to a creek. It was a beautiful place to explore and play. But it was mostly by myself. My little brother wasn't born yet so I mostly played alone. I had long hours to explore the creek, the vegetable gardens, the flower beds. I do remember my grandpa letting me walk with him to the mailbox every day. We picked up nails and odds and ends along the way. It felt like play and made me feel important. He took me with him when he rode the bus to pay bills downtown. He took me with him when he did yardwork for other people. Just spending time with a child and making them feel valued can be a form of play.I have another memory of a birthday party when I was maybe eight—I don’t remember really "playing" but I do remember my classmate friends being invited, getting presents, and feeling as if I fit right in and I belonged. I felt valued and had fun.That was probably the last memory I have of any kind of good play with kids.When I was in fifth grade, we moved away from everything I had ever known.

I was thrust into a new school, and even though it was only eleven miles away, it might as well have been a thousand. Things were different, people were different, and I felt lost and alone. My parents didn't even think about it, I guess. That I might have feelings, be anxious, or want to talk about things. Back in the day, most parents didn't talk to their kids about things like that. The idea was, be seen and not heard.This was right around puberty time, and I lost all of my confidence and courage. I was bullied on the school bus. My grades faltered. I also had problems in my family with alcoholism, and always had feelings of upheaval and uncertainty running around in my head.I didn’t invite friends over, because I never knew what we might come home to.

There was no real play in my life at this point.Fast forward to another move when I was maybe twelve—this one clear across the vast plains of Texas to another state, New Mexico. My father got a job there. I had never heard of New Mexico and when Albuquerque came into view in the middle of the night, I thought it was beautiful. The darkness of the mountains and the twinkling of the city lights was pretty breathtaking and new, even for a twelve year old.But when I woke up in the morning, all I could see was brown. Everywhere. Brown grass, brown trees, brown buildings. I hated it. We lived in a rented house and I "played" with the kids next door. The oldest boy wrote me love letters when I didn't even know what flirting or love was.

And then I started middle school.Oh mercy. I remember that what accounted for play was actually adolescent flirting. Silliness and nonsense. We were worried about our new bodies and our ability to navigate this new school, this new identity that was thrust upon us. The identity of being a semi-adult. One who was supposed to giggle at boys, act dumb, and act like we knew what certain words meant, when really, we had no idea. I remember the slumber parties - feeling out of place, not knowing some of the sexual sayings and words the other girls talked about. It felt like the parties were supposed to be fun, but they weren't.

I remember having a birthday party and invited some of the cool kids because I wanted to be liked. The party ended up way out of control, and my dad broke his toe chasing one of those "cool" kids down the block. When you become a teenager, your old style of play is no more, and play becomes more grown up and serious.

My mom and dad both worked and I came home to an empty house every day. Which was a recipe for disaster. Then, a tumor was discovered in my knee, I had surgery, and spent the next five months at home, recuperating. Boys descended upon my house. They had races down the hall in my wheelchair. They ate up all the food. They flirted with me and I truly was extremely naive and thought they liked me. I guess this was a form of play. In their mind anyway. My parents would often go out, and they would tell my little brother not to let any boys in. He would charge each one of my boy "friends" $1 each and have them slip the dollar under the door and never open it. He was mischievous that way.Then—someone did like me. Or so I thought. A boy.

He was young and learning everything too, just like I was. He came from a broken home and had his own issues. But I thought he was perfect. Until that night that he slid his hand up the back of my shirt. I felt weird, but I went along, because I thought I was in love and this is what young lovers do - a form of play. Then he said those fateful words, "If you love me, you will have sex with me." I wanted to be liked so I complied. Silly me.

My parents were not often home, so we had plenty of opportunities to be alone. Of course, when I got pregnant at sixteen, everything changed. No more play. Only seriousness and sadness. I hid the pregnancy for six months, trying to go about my business but terrified that someone would find out. My parents did find out (when they took me to the doctor) and were forgiving and supportive, for which I'm still thankful.

Play was forgotten. Fun was no more. I left school (feeling completely ostracized), attended a little school downtown called New Futures (a new project that allowed pregnant teenagers to continue schooling), which had just opened. I was one of the very first attendees.

I admit, I felt welcome there. People were nice, loving, and there were twenty other girls just like me. I got straight As. I learned how to fry an egg, use coping skills, and decided to give up my baby for adoption. No play here, too much sadness. I was only sixteen but felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. There were thirteen year old girls there, just babies having babies.

After I had my baby, I experienced a weird sense of fogginess. I don't remember a lot. I went back to school, felt like everyone in the world was watching me and played too much. I ditched a lot of classes, hung out with people who smoked weed, and spent quite a bit of time doing things that might be considered play to teenagers but not to grown up adults who knew right from wrong.

Then I met my future husband. He had just come back from Vietnam and we fell instantly in love! He was a little older and more experienced. He didn't play as much as my younger friends and I was happy about that. We got married young and just celebrated 45 years of being together. He still plays more than I do.

We played a lot during our early years. The years BK (Before Kids). We traveled and did fun things - concerts, parties, trips to the mountains, etc. After six years together, I found out I was pregnant. Wow! Another chance when I thought I might not have more chances. I thanked the heavens above. I felt so much guilt for giving up my first child that I knew I had to get it right. I stopped the play. I had no time for selfishness because I was about to be a MOTHER. I forgot about taking care of myself and concentrated on taking care of my beautiful baby girl. Four years later, another beautiful baby girl came along. I played with them, but there were so many things to think about: work, bills, taking care of my husband, building a house, etc.

About this time, when I was 42, my firstborn child found me. I can't tell you the love, fear, and trepidation I felt when I got a letter saying he wanted to meet me. My husband had always known about him, my daughters had not. I had searched for him when he was sixteen and was told (by the court liason) that it was not a good idea. When I finally met him, I felt like my life was really complete. But that was the textbook "Honeymoon Phase." We thought life would be perfect for us. But, we didn't have a history together. We didn't know each other's silliness and quirks. We had no idea how to do anything normal. We missed the opportunity to bond as mother and infant. We never had the art of play. And I will always be sorry for that.

Raising my daughters and living life, I didn't exercise as much, I put on weight, stopped getting my hair cut and doing my nails. None of it mattered because I had my babies. I was going to be the best mother I could be. And I loved being with my girls.We bought five and a half acres up in the mountains and built a beautiful house. My girls had so much time to laugh and play. We decided to homeschool and they spent days learning about anything and everything, exploring, hanging out with other homeschooling kids, taking field trips, and playing. Lots of playing. Of course, me, not so much. I was cleaning, gardening, putting up wood, building fires, doing a million things that needed to be done.

Now, they are in their 20s and 30s, both married and my youngest daughter has two beautiful daughters of her own. And that mama knows how to PLAY. And Grammy ( that's me) is learning the joy of play again with my grandchildren. We can spend hours working puzzles, reading books, playing blocks, and just hanging out together. Sometimes you don't have to do anything to play. Just sit around and talk. Play is fun!

And I am going to therapy to learn how to take care of myself and "play" again, doing things that I like to do: plein air painting, taking day trips, going places with my husband, and just enjoying life with friends and family. The Gift of Play cannot be overemphasized.

I am hoping that when my granddaughters hit puberty, they keep their courage and confidence, don't let people take advantage of them, and they will be strong enough to stand up to life and show the world who is boss. And I hope they don't forget how to play. I spent over thirty years NOT playing and it's so good to be back in that world again.​My advice to young mothers - don't be so serious. Life with children is over so fast. Enjoy your kids. They grow up so fast right before your eyes. Embrace everything. Don't have so many rules. Don't have a schedule set in stone. Don't always make them go to bed at 8pm. Let them have a doughnut once in a while without making them feel guilty. Don't plan set nap times every day. Ease up. Spend quality time with them. I remember the words I always used to think in my head when certain things happened and people talked to me like I had no brain. And this is it: DON'T EVER FORGET WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE A KID. EVER. And when I had my kids, I never forgot that.

And remember, we can't change the past, but we can make changes so it has less power over us.

​We can direct our future.

Dee Sanchez is an artist living and working in the village of Alameda.Her work is painted primarily on location throughout New Mexico.Some of her subjects are wide open spaces, big florals, and thunderstorms.

Dee was also a homeschooling mom back in the day before the world of computers.A time when homeschooling was barely legal.

When not painting, Dee enjoys taking photographs, reading, and hanging out with her granddaughters.

When I met Jess, she was an enthusiastic teenager, jumping into her first ever ballet class. From that moment on, I have been continuously impressed by her drive to succeed, her zeal for life, and her resilience. As you read her story, you will see just what I mean! As I've watched her grow up and into the beautiful woman you see in this feature, I remain encouraged by the fact that she has never lost her sense of self along the way, and that she spreads joy and kindness wherever she goes!

"Five facts that I want the Simply Sisterhood community to know about me:

1. I’ve never had a brain freeze, which means I never quite fill up on ice cream.

2. Being from Albuquerque, Balloon Fiesta to me is more of a holiday, my favorite time of the year!

3. This fall, I’ll begin volunteering with the IRC in Atlanta providing support to refugees.

4. Slowly but surely, I’m studying linguistics through UNM.

5. I have really flexible feet, so I can walk on the tops of my toes."​

"I was born and raised in Albuquerque. I wasn’t really a tomboy, but I was definitely not girly. When I was young, I really wasn’t one of those kids with an intense focus or hobby. I was just very go-with-the-flow. In middle school, I asked one of my best friends what she was doing after school one day, and she was trying out for the dance team. Spur of the moment, I called my dad and told him I wasn’t taking the bus home and asked him to pick me up later because I wanted to try out. My parents were both pretty shocked, because I had never really taken a big interest in dance, other than watching episodes of the TV show So You Think You Can Dance? I made the team! I remember working on our very first routine that we were set to perform for Halloween, and calling my mom and getting emotional because I just really wanted to work hard and put my best effort forward for something because it really mattered to me! I was just a seventh grader on a middle school dance team, but it felt so big and important to me and I had such energy that I wanted to put forth for this goal. That moment has always stuck with me - because even at that moment, I knew how important dance would be to my life.

I danced in high school on the school team as well. I also started dancing at a studio during that time, and that was when I really started to get serious and planning dance into my future and investing. My high school coach, Leslie, invested so much into me and I am forever grateful to her. She’s such a glamorous person. She is the incarnation of the phrase “I woke up like this,” which was not something I was really familiar with. So much of dance is how you present yourself and Leslie really helped me to become more comfortable with the showmanship aspect of it as well. After high school, I tried out for the dance team at the University of New Mexico and felt really confident that it was the next step. I danced in middle school and high school, so it made sense that the next step would be college! I didn’t even make it past the first cut of auditions. It was scary for me, because it was the first time I wasn’t really a part of a team as a dancer. I kept taking classes at the studio, and I spent a lot of time dancing by myself to develop my strengths. I took a lot of random dance classes at UNM as well to build upon what I had already learned.

Leslie told me about auditions for the Duke City Gladiators (arena football) Dance Team, and I decided to give it a shot. It was my first “grown up” audition - the kind where you wear your hair down and have your make up done, and I had a lot of people help me prepare for it. I made it! I danced with them for a year. I think about how different things would have been if I had made the team at UNM. It was the natural, expected order of things; middle school dance team, high school dance team, college dance team, and THEN professional. But that actually wouldn’t have helped me get to where I am now. The experience dancing with the arena football team was really informative for me and such a learning experience."​

"In the offseason, I was still taking a bunch of dance classes with the girls and coach of my pro team. The past year, my coach had been dropping hints that I should audition for an NBA dance team, and specifically the Atlanta Hawks Cheerleaders. We had gone to Vegas for a dance convention and Leslie, my coach, had introduced me to the director of the Hawks Cheerleaders while I was out there. It was nothing formal, but she watched me in a few classes and we had a nice conversation. Fast forward to a random jazz class in Albuquerque a year later, and my coach and some of the girls were telling me that I should go audition. I was pretty adamant that I wasn’t ready - I was only nineteen at the time and just felt too inexperienced to put myself out there. I was leaving to visit some friends in Texas the following morning and Leslie joked that I should fly from Texas to Atlanta for the auditions, which I just laughed off. But she had a heart to heart talk with me and showed a lot of support and confidence. . . and I decided I was going to do it! That night, I changed my plane ticket, and decided I was going to fly from Texas to Atlanta and go for it! I had JUST enough money saved up for the trip and made all sorts of arrangements to make it possible. I asked an old friend who was living in Atlanta if I could stay a night or two with him because I could only afford an AirBNB for a certain amount of nights. He said I could stay with him and so the trip was all set. I didn’t even have a smart phone or GPS, so I had to print all of the directions I would need ahead of time and printed the bus schedules, because I couldn’t afford to rent a car - or even old enough to do it! My parents didn’t really believe that I was doing this until the day came that I flew out to Atlanta. Less that twenty four hours before I left, my place to stay for those first couple of nights fell through. The guy I was going to stay with told me it wasn’t going to work out and I could no longer stay with him, which threw a wrench in my plans. There were so many obstacles working against me, but I just wanted to follow through and make it happen. I had a folder with all of my maps and bus routes for the week and I was off! That first night, I ended up sleeping at the airport because I didn’t have a place to sleep. I scrounged up some extra money and was able to sleep at my AIRBNB an extra night. My commute during the week of the auditions was almost three hours; I had to ride three buses and two trains to get from where I was staying to the arena. I was literally up at five in the morning walking a mile to the bus stop to get on my way.

When I got to that first open call audition, I just thought that It didn’t matter what happened because I had made it and I really just wanted to have fun. And it was so amazing to be in an arena full of women who shared the same dream as me. I had a blast! When they were calling out numbers for finalists, I wasn’t expecting my number to be called and so I wasn’t nervous at all. I was proud of myself for just showing up and putting forth my best effort and getting my first major audition under my belt. And then they called my number as a finalist and I thought, “Oh man. Now this is serious!” and that’s when the nerves kicked in!

The finalist week was a really diverse set of things that we had to work through. We did interviews, team bonding, fitness tests, and acting, because they really want to see how you will engage with the fans. The dancing during finalists week was really minimal, because it is more about how you hold yourself and if you are someone they want to represent their team. I made friends with a girl named Lindsey, who had been on the team the year before, and she really took me under her wing. I started talking to her at the finalist mixer and she asked me a lot of questions about myself and where I came from. At the time, the transportation situation and low quality air mattress I was sleeping on were just really starting to wear on me, and I confided in her that I was getting burnt out and exhausted. She actually invited me to stay with her in her house and was just such a genuine help to me. She already had been through the experience before and so her guidance was seriously amazing! She helped me with the little stuff, like getting my hair done and going over the routines together, but more than that, she really gave me peace of mind. The fact that I had someone there that could work on things together with me was valuable beyond measure. After the auditions, we were hanging out and waiting to see if we had made the team. We were refreshing Instagram every couple of seconds, as they were announcing one new team member every 15-30 minutes, so it was an all-day ordeal waiting to find out if we had made the cut. Halfway through the day, I called my mom and just talked to her about the probability of me not making it. I told her I would call her back if I heard anything, and literally the second we hung up, my picture popped up announcing that I had made it! So I called her back and we freaked out together over the phone, which was super fun! It was completely surreal and one of the most lasting moments of my life. Despite all the odds, I had made it happen and one of my dreams had come true! I feel like the story is cool because it was just sort of a wild whirlwind of an experience, but I think that was honestly really good for me. I didn’t have the time to overthink things or stress myself out about it. And then after the moment faded, I was like “Oh, I live in Atlanta now. The course of my life has changed!”

"I have a group of friends from high school that have stayed true to each other throughout time and distance (Hi Hannah, Lauryn, and Tess!) There are four of us, and those three girls are truly like sisters to me. Each year, we go through new experiences together and grow even closer than we were when we spent everyday with each other in high school. We are very spread out over the United States now, but we all still make a huge effort to visit each other and each other’s families. They are my sisterhood. We are all very different from each other, and come from different kinds of families, but there is something so strong within our friendship that we just click and support one another. We are very compassionate towards each other and cheer each other on. We don’t compete and we just understand each other on a deep level. You become like the people you surround yourself with, and I have been so lucky to surround myself with some truly great people. Good friendships come from people who are open to other people’s perspective, and I am so glad to have those types of people in my life.

My sister and I are pretty far apart in age, and I feel like we are finally getting to an age where we may understand each other a little bit better. She’s fifteen now, and is starting to make life decisions and it’s cool to watch her sort of grow up. She’s much more go-with-the-flow than I am. She makes friends in all realms, which is great. But she definitely is more of a people pleaser than I am and I’d like her to see that it doesn’t matter what other people think of you. There are so many things that people will tell you that you should do or shouldn’t do, but at the end of the day, I think what matters is the energy you are putting out into the world. You know what your own happiness is and where it is found, and that’s what you should be pursuing. It’s about giving your best and being the best version of yourself!"

"As I get older, I notice a lot of how being a woman affects my life. I didn’t see a lot of conflict when I was younger; not a lot of belittling or ugliness towards me as a female. My parents raised me to be super confident in who I was and I just really didn’t question it. Now, as I’m entering womanhood, I feel a shift in how I am treated. It depends on which environment I’m in. I recently saw a quote about how at the age of twenty, we call males men, but we don’t call females women until they are much older. I think women are very typecast to be wrapped up and made pretty with a bow on top starting from a very young age. I don’t necessarily feel that pressure, but I do recognize it more in people around me. I was never afraid to be myself, maybe because I didn’t feel like I fit in often. I do, however, feel like women around me feel pressure to be a specific type of woman and fit a mold. Women aren’t a specific one brand. We don’t all fit in the same mold. People are so diverse, and when you put a small idea around what women are, it limits half of the population in so many ways and I don’t like that. Now, I’m just ready for the people who haven't moved forward with society in accepting that women can be all kinds of things and you can’t limit them, to be welcomed to 2017 or left in the past. Labeling everything is boring. There are so many layers to all people of all genders, and it is unfair to assume that we can be put in a small box. I want to live in a world where everyone can live confidently as themselves without fear of repercussions against them."

​Jess has a way of making everyone around her feel like the best version of themselves. I loved being her teacher because her hard work and determination made me look good, but I much more enjoy being her friend as she reminds me of the small acts of love that make the world a better place! She is truly one of a kind, and we are thrilled to have her in the Sisterhood!

{All photos are property of Simply Sisterhood and Smitten by a Promise Photography. ​Please refrain from cropping, editing or copying photos.}

About a year and a half ago,I wrote a post about the heart behind this project. I wrote it after my first three interviews for the blog, as I just wanted to give a little introduction towhy I was interviewing women and taking their pictures and posting it on the internet and was really not a creep, I swear!I wrote about the women in my life that I wanted to encourage, and about why I think the world needs to rally around women more often.

Today, I want to write a follow up or a part two, so to speak, to share some of the things I have learned thus far on this journey. I think we live in a world of quick fixes. Everyone is our “best friend,” and we show appreciation for people by double tapping their social media photos. We read captions and ingest people in 140 characters or less. We sit around with our friends, snapchatting our food and reading about other people’s daily highlights on Facebook or Instagram. We perceive things as being #goals, whether it be a couple, a family or a career. Social media, blogging, and technology are all things I enjoy and use regularly, but I have always wanted to find a way to use them with more purpose.

What if I could engage my culture by using popular platforms to go deeper? What if I could sit across from someone with no distractions and just ask them to share themselves with me? What if I asked all of the questions social media doesn’t ask or care to hear the answer to? Maybe a picture of your kids smiling and eating ice cream cones will get 75 likes on Instagram, but what about all of the moments that you wanted to break down during the day because you struggle with mental illness? What about the divorce, the illness, the grief, the triumphs, the overcoming, the soul behind the filtered photos?

Here is an example: I post a lot of cute, posed pictures of my daughters on Instagram. I even have a custom hashtag that is a play on words with their names, and I love looking through it and watching their relationship grow. BUT I also remember that I bribed the hell out of them to pose sometimes, that some days, taking pictures of them was the only thing that made me smile because I was feeling really depressed, or that they both started crying right after the photos were taken. None of you witness my actual life on Instagram - just the moments I choose to share, with words I choose to put out in to the world about my life and family. We call people our friends and claim to know them, even if we only follow them on social media. And that is okay, but that’s not what I wanted when I started Simply Sisterhood. I wanted to create a community of women who allowed themselves to be known on a deeper level, to be accepted as they are, even if they are scuffed up and rough around the edges.I wanted to love people as they are and believe in them and support them on their journey.

Some of my favorite moments during this journey thus far have been crying with women as they detail their struggles; whether it be a divorce, an illness, or a loss, or watching them cry tears of joys as they relive their favorite, most meaningful moments. And the coolest thing? All of those moments connect and make the beautiful women you see on our blog.These women all inspire me with their strength and true beauty. They are doctors, teachers, fighters, mothers, writers, mountain climbers, seekers, healers, artists, and scientists. They are you and they are me. I have interviewed people who view the world in utterly different ways than I do. I have interviewed women who have stories I can relate to on such deep levels. I have cried over abuse, bullies and loss with women I am meeting for the first time. It is a beautiful process, just sitting with someone and letting her be herself. I wish we did that more often - just sat with people in their joy or their pain. We are so quick to dole out advice or little patronizing words of wisdom - and while advice and wise words have a place, when was the last time you just sat with someone and loved them as they talked about themselves? When was the last time you didn’t shy away from letting someone feel their emotions and instead just listened and let them wash over you?

This project is for other women.​Or at least that is what I thought when I started it in 2016. But it is so much for me, too. I come home feeling energized and alive after a really good shoot or an interview. You women give me life. Getting to tell your stories is such a gift to me - the fact that you trust me to share you with the world is such a responsibility and a treasure. I am so honored to get to write about all of you and share your words with others.

Morgan was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico.She is married to the man of her dreams (Ben) who took her to his senior prom, mama to two girls nineteen months apart ​(Sawyer & Hadley), lover of writing, reading, throwing parties, eating s'mores, wearing all things gold, empowerment and very large cups of coffee.She started this project to fill a void she saw missing in the world. She wants women everywhere to see and know their beauty and power. Her aim is to create a global tribe of women who aren't afraid to stop competing and start cheering for each other.

​Monica is the picture of poise and confidence. I loved getting to sit with her and hear about her work as an educator and how she is striving to make Albuquerque a better place. We started off with five things she wants the Simply Sisterhood community to know about her:

1) Running and working out is my stress relief. I love running on the bosque by my house!2) My husband sings and plays saxophone in a band. 3) I love reading! I'm often too busy to read as much as I would like, but it is something I truly enjoy.4) I also LOVE watching my kids do the things they love - playing soccer and basketball. 5) One of my favorite things to do is stay home in the evenings and have family movie nights.

"I was born and raised here in Albuquerque, and I just really love it here. Both of my parents were educators (and my mom still is!) and I always thought I would NEVER want to do something like that. I started out majoring in engineering and it was NOT for me. I was a program manager for YDI while I was in college, and I just really loved working with kids and realized that was what I wanted to do. I taught middle school math for several years before getting my Master's Degree in administration and getting recruited to be the director of a charter school, which is what I have been doing for fifteen years now!

I am the oldest of four children. I have two sisters, Patricia and Tanya, and a brother, Alfred, who we call Junior. We are actually ALL educators, like our parents. Isn’t that crazy? My parents really instilled the importance of family in us. We have all gone through trials at different times, and we have all been able to rally around each other and help each other through the tough stuff. We all go to my parent’s house every single Sunday for family dinner. Family is so important to me. I am so lucky to have a close relationship with both my sisters and mother. The four of us together truly define sisterhood! We are always there for each other through no matter what!"

"I was fairly young when I got pregnant with my son, Santi. My mom is a little bit old school, and she didn't talk to me for a week when she found out. She was truly shocked, I think! She is truly a wonderful woman an a great mother and grandmother. If I could be even half the mother she is, I would be so lucky!

Santi was born on Mother's Day, and he made me a mom! He is one of the most hardworking, determined people I know. He excels in school and athletics and he is extremely motivated in all aspects of life. He just started his freshman year of college in Wisconsin this fall - on an academic scholarship and he is playing college basketball, which is his dream. I really look up to him for the way he never stops working to achieve his dreams. Even if he DID inherited my sarcasm, he is an amazing kid!

Emily is my daughter, and I like to say that we are really close, even though she it thirteen and will probably laugh at me Fe saying it! She is the kindest, most loving person I know. She wants everyone to be happy all the time and really cares for others. She is also extremely determined and hardworking, like her brother! She is nice to everyone, and the only time I see her get a little bit sassy is on the soccer field. She is very athletic and really independent as well. I really try to maintain an honest, open communication between us and I want her to know that she can tell me anything! I'm also trying to teach her to be an independent woman, and that she doesn't have to rely on anyone but herself to be successful. Her love for others is so inspiring to me!"

"I have a wonderful sisterhood within my career. I work in an administration with five women in charge and we have all been together for about four years now, although it feels like forever! We know each other so well and work well with one another! We really don’t judge each other, which I think is what makes our work environment truly special.

Outside of work and my immediate family, I have one more person I consider a sister! My friend Cristina is just the real deal. We get along SO well and we just gel together. She’s the one that I call after a hard day to meet me for a beer. Our friendship is judgement free. She doesn’t care if she comes over and I have laundry all over my house, or judge me for what I am wearing or anything like that. She’s a true friend. And it doesn’t hurt that our sons grew up playing basketball together all the way through high school, and our daughters play soccer together!

When I was in my twenties, and when my kids were small, I really cared what other people thought. I was that insecure girl in high school who wasn’t sure of herself. As I've grown up and had more experiences, I’ve learned to not really care what others think or how they see me. You can’t make everyone happy with your choices, so you have to just do what is best for you and be happy with yourself! As I grew in my career and as my kids grew, I slowly learned to not care what people think. I am who I am and I’m happy with myself! I think that’s what happens the more life experience you have; you learn that you can’t make everyone else happy all the time. You have to focus on your goals and make the best choice possible."

"My husband and I met in college. He works for the federal government. He is a very caring person, always puts his family first. He works so hard to take care of the family. A huge reason that our relationship works so well is that we both place high priority on family and togetherness. He is a homebody, but I’m trying to teach him to enjoy travel more! He’s definitely the level headed one in the relationship, which is great because we balance each other out. I’m the type of person that has an idea, and 100%, I'm going for it right then. So my husband reminds me to take a step back and look at the details before we make a big decision. He is so supportive of my career and constantly encouraging me in all of my endeavors.

My favorite part of being an educator is watching my students realize there is hope and perseverance will bring success. Every year I get to hand a high school diploma to a group of graduates who have overcame many difficult obstacles. This is my favorite part of the school year. There are many challenges in education, however my biggest challenge is teaching students to have grit along with perseverance. . . motivatinf the unmotivated!

My future plans are to finish my career in education in about 5-8 years and start a new journey. I'm actually still trying to figure out what that next journey will be. One goal is for my husband and I to continue to grow together and support each other through the changes in our lives; children getting older, career changes, and retirement. Another goal is for my children to have success in education and live happy, healthy lives. Family is essential and I want my family to always be close and supportive. ​"​

Monica is genuine, kind and immediately puts a person at ease. It can be nerve wracking to sit down with someone you just met and talk about your life and tell your story, but she was quick to treat me like an old friend and be very open with me. I was most struck by the way she speaks of her children. She got emotional talking about how proud she is of Santi and Emily and it's clear that she has invested so much into creating the best life possible for them and watching them excel at the things they really enjoy.

Welcome to the Sisterhood, Monica! We are so honored to have you join us.​